How knowledge management & automation will lead cities & local government into the post-covid world

The covid-19 pandemic has put city authorities under an enormous amount of pressure. Navigating both citizens & businesses through lockdowns was an unprecedented challenge for city leaders, with many forced to think & act on their feet in hourly cycles. Now, they’re dealing with seismic shifts in the way we live in urban areas & adapting to their own new way of working.

At Hopstay, we witnessed firsthand the spikes in customer service inquiries closely aligned with the implementation of local lockdowns. In most cases, customer service saw an average of 500% increased service load at peak times. This typically aligned with key announcements on new rules & restrictions, with citizens turning to their local authority to clarify messaging often coming from central government.

This was happening at the same time as local governments were, like many of us, getting used to to distributed teams, work-from-home policies, Zoom meetings & changing workflows.

So, in light of this, how will cities transform their operations moving forward?

One: Source of truth will become vital.

One of the biggest issues facing all of us during the pandemic was accessing the right information. This has application on both a customer level (i.e. the citizen) & an operational level (i.e. those working at city hall).

Cutting through the noise of information out there was tough for citizens, especially when a lot of the information coming out was complex & convoluted. Indeed, this was a frequently-cited criticism of many government responses to the pandemic.

Those working at city hall also faced their own challenges. Public bodies typically found it more difficult to adapt to working-from-home conditions due to an over-reliance on outdated methods of collaboration and managing both knowledge & workflow. This made the job of responding to an increasing customer support burden even more challenging.

Managing a single source of truth will therefore be fundamental to city operations moving forward. Instead of relying on office experts, we need to rely on smart knowledge management — for the benefit of both the citizen & the organisation itself.

Two: Communication channels must be modernised.

In a flurry to find relevant information & communicate with organisations, consumers are increasingly turning to the platforms they know best — social media & messaging platforms.

Messaging platforms provide an opportunity for cities to increase their capacity to respond to queries, as the conversational interface doesn’t require the same lengthy communication style as emails nor the time burden of phone calls. It is an effective communication channel for both the citizen & the customer service agent to maximise efficiency. Also, automation tools such as chatbots & saved responses can be seamlessly integrated to provide instant answers to repetitive queries. This ensures agents can can focus on more complex queries & maintain response timeliness in peak periods.

Some local governments have already experimented with live chat platforms & chatbots, but we expect to see this become the norm over the next 2–3 years, much like it has in the private sector.

Three: A proactive approach to the distribution of information.

It’s far easier to send one message to an audience of 50 than to receive 50 messages & respond to each one individually.

During the covid-19 outbreak, a solid, reliable knowledge distribution framework would have been enormously useful for city authorities.

Imagine a situation where you could sign up to receive information alerts from city hall every day via text or email. You’d do so knowing the information was reliable, trusted & most importantly, local. This would reduce the spread of misinformation, ensure a centralised, up-to-date source of truth & reduce the likelihood of an overwhelmed customer service department.

This change in approach from reactive to proactive underpins how cities should be aiming to interact with their citizens in the future. It’s not just about pandemics, but also about effectively managing natural disasters & large-scale events that impact the way we interact with our urban environment.

We expect to see these principles become a key element of the digital transformation journey of our cities moving forward.

Feel free to contact me at lucas@hopstay.co if you’re interested in what Hopstay is up to or would like to chat further. Thanks!